Join Us: Corporate Venture Forum Next Steps

Growth Happens When We Scale Up Together.

At the recent Corporate Venture Forum, attendees were asked to develop an idea on how Milwaukee can work to improve entrepreneurial and corporate partnering. Following the event, Professor of Urban Planning at UW-Milwaukee, Sammis White, presented his class with the challenge of analyzing the recommendations and determining what we could implement in the near future.

Recommendations from the Forum:

Take mentorship to the next level; focus on assisting entrepreneurs with finding funding and forming advisory boards

Create a platform for dialog with corporations centered around growth opportunities i.e. “speed dating” or “office hours” with corporations

Establish a “supply chain symposium,” modeled after the Intersect Symposium

Bring in a national leader in corporate venture funding; have an invite-only meeting with key CEOs to elaborate why they participate in corporate venturing, how to do it and what not to do. Follow up with a workshop for a single company–teach a CEO how to do it in his company as a proof of concept

The Assignment:
The UW-Milwaukee Urban Planning class have spend the past few weeks further researching the ideas, meeting with some of the event attendees, both entrepreneur and corporate, to determine their final recommendation. Their recommendations will help Scale Up Milwaukee and partner organizations, such as Innovation in Milwaukee (MiKE) take the next steps.

Interested in hearing the students’ recommendations?Please join us November 19th at the Global Water Center to learn what the class believes could be the best “next steps” for Scale Up Milwaukee and its’ partners, like Innovation in Milwaukee (MiKE) to take in order to continue to improve corporate and entrepreneur partnering.